Mr. Bush Swings Back

Published: February 21, 2000

The unpredictable Republican presidential campaign entered a new phase with Gov. George W. Bush's numerically impressive but tactically brutal victory in the South Carolina primary. Having established his resilience as a campaigner, Mr. Bush now has a chance to all but knock out Senator John McCain in Michigan. But the South Carolina spectacle was an expensive contest for both the candidates and their party. It exposed cleavages and identity issues within Republicanism that have been brewing for 20 years. And both the winner and the loser leave their highly personal conflict in South Carolina with big unanswered questions about who they really are.

To be sure, Mr. Bush showed that he could sharpen his message and fire up his organization to turn out traditional conservatives. But it was hardly a reassuring performance to swing voters troubled about whether Mr. Bush has presidential-scale experience and intellect. Having stepped onto the national stage as a healing centrist, he ran hard to the right in one of the G.O.P.'s most reactionary redoubts. There is still a rote quality to his message and his content-free sloganeering. He started out as a ''compassionate conservative'' and now claims to be a ''reformer with results.'' But a talent for alliteration does not add up to a sound grasp of policy. Even in victory, Mr. Bush seemed fearful of voyaging into expansive discussions of education, health care, budget policy and foreign affairs.

Mr. McCain may have done himself as much damage with a scornful concession speech as Mr. Bush had inflicted at the polls. The Arizona senator has been assuring everyone that he is a Reaganite optimist who really does not possess the explosive temper attributed to him in Beltway lore. But the testiness of Mr. McCain's comments about Mr. Bush's ''negative message of fear'' -- and his coyness with interviewers about his real meaning -- gave voters an unsettling glimpse of a heretofore veiled aspect of Mr. McCain's personality.

The contest between these two men could be resolved in a matter of days, depending on whether Mr. McCain can match Mr. Bush's ability to get off the canvas. But the underlying dispute about their party's direction is likely to play out more slowly. Not since Ronald Reagan's challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976 has there been such a frank contest over the fundamentals of the party. Mr. McCain has denounced what he calls the ''iron triangle'' of lobbyists, campaign donations and legislation in Washington. But in South Carolina he was done in by the party's ''iron triangle'' of religious conservatism, tobacco money and anti-abortion groups that has been the basis for G.O.P. dominance in the Sun Belt for two decades.

South Carolinians took Mr. McCain for someone who was trying to transform the party and send it in an entirely new direction. In a calculated sacrifice of his moderate credentials, Governor Bush made himself an instrument of a core-Republican backlash in South Carolina. Yet Mr. Bush has been around politics long enough to know that there is much that is appealing about Mr. McCain's message for a general-election candidate. Republicans, Democrats and independents alike have been moved by Mr. McCain's denunciation of special interests in Washington, of pork-barrel spending and tax breaks for the privileged.

But this message was engulfed by a tide of resentment in South Carolina among the anti-government religious conservatives who have been a key element in the party's modern renaissance. Ronald Reagan managed to come across as someone who shared those voters' negative feelings about Washington but was still full of an optimism and hope for the future. It is unclear whether Mr. Bush can draw on this politics of resentment without becoming its captive. It is equally unclear whether Mr. McCain can stow his personal resentment toward Mr. Bush and get the positive side of his personality back out in front. Michigan's rambunctious electorate -- with its blue-collar Republicans and Reagan Democrats -- will provide a testing ground more favorable to Mr. McCain. But the advantage is all with Mr. Bush right now, and after South Carolina, no one can deny that he has the will and the money to press that advantage.